


Not Today

by Weevilo707



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Pining, Quadrant Confusion, Retcon Timeline, Unresolved Romantic Tension, davekat - Freeform, in which karkat realizes that pining as not fun as the movies make it out to be, so much fucking pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 00:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6882316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weevilo707/pseuds/Weevilo707
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat knew he was going to fuck everything up one of these days. But just. Not today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Today

You are by far, the biggest goddamn fuckup this side of paradox space.

Honestly, you should have seen this coming from a mile away. Alarm bells should have started ringing the very first time he came complaining to you that everyone else on this giant hunk of rock was too busy making googoo eyes of varying quadrants at each other and that the two of you might as well hang out. Or well, the three of you, including the little carapician.

The alarm bells never sounded though, so like an idiot you went along with it. You went along complaining like a complete asshat, but you went along none the less. Dave didn’t seem to mind though, because he thinks your endless tirades are fucking funny. Maybe they are. Maybe everything about you just reduces you down to this huge laughingstock who can’t tell his head from his ass.

You sure do feel like a huge joke. Some pathetic little freak that the elder gods of the furthest ring can’t help but giggle at. Oh would you look at Karkat, isn’t he just the funniest thing you ever saw? The poor miserable fucker can’t have a single friendship without falling ass backwards in love. It’s just so funny.

You didn’t try to. You tried very fucking hard not to in fact. You knew it wouldn’t work out before you knew you were even interested. For one reason, Dave made it abundantly clear how much he doesn’t understand or care for quadrants. The second, he has the same odd human bias against dating guys that John talked about. You did have it explained to you that not _all_ humans are this way, since shit wasn’t adding up with the way Rose and Kanaya are. An overwhelming majority apparently is though, and that includes Dave.

This shouldn’t bother you. You should be fine because you should be able to be happy with just a normal friendship. You don’t _want_ to like him like that! You can’t even properly explain what ‘that’ is though.

You thought it was pale at first, (okay, you thought it was pitch at first, but you got over that pretty quickly) because holy fuck is this asshole pitiful. You don’t know much about human nutrition, but you don’t need to know goddamn anything to know that Dave is doing it wrong. So sometimes you have to nag at him to eat more, or to eat better. Sometimes you just skip that hassle and try to make something for him yourself.

Fucking hell do you suck at cooking though. It turns out Dave is actually half decent, so you can get him to eat something not ninety-five percent sugar and grease if you let him see you flailing around in the nutritionblock and he decides to help you.

That’s not even the most pitiful thing about him though. You can’t help but notice the way he’ll flinch away from touches, or the way he almost constantly seems to be on edge, or the way his expression will go carefully blank at certain topics.

Your feelings can never be that fucking simple though, so of course it’s not as cut and dry as only pale. So the entire time you’re trying to resist the urge to reach out and run a hand softly across his face, you can’t help but notice how goddamn nice that face is, or how pissed he makes you as he’s trying to play everything off as no big deal.

You want to shoosh him and kiss him in the same breath and you are just so fucked up.

Of course though, you can’t do either, so that solves that problem. Except it fucking doesn’t, because you’re still left sighing at night when you think about him and feeling your digestionsac flip when he laughs and finding yourself caught up in these little what if fantasies. What if you told him? What if he’s okay with your feelings being blurred along all the quadrants? What if he likes you back? What if shit actually goes well for once?

When you’re messaging each other you always find yourself writing little symbols in the chat box but never sending them.

<>  
<3  
<3<

Honestly, it’s only your indecision on which one to send that keeps you from ever going through with it. Well that and your desire to not fuck this up for once.

So you push it all down as much as you can. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to keep you safe. Humans are more lenient on what you can do with a friend. Dave’s guard is high at first, but bit by bit it comes down for you. So you sit a little closer than is maybe normal, smile more than you have in a long fucking time, don’t draw back when you accidentally touch.

Dave seems fine with it, and if he wasn’t you’d stop in a heartbeat. He’s not uncomfortable though. He’ll lean against you when he’s half asleep watching a movie with you, or hook his chin on your shoulder when he comes up behind you look at your husktop, or let himself double over laughing when you manage to fuck up even worse than usual while trying to cook. So you let yourself have this. Tell yourself that it’s enough, that if you ignore it all long enough maybe your thinkpan will get with the program and stop already.

It doesn’t go away though. It gets worse, and you fucking lay awake at night thinking about him and feel your insides get rendered into a mush when he’s happy and then feel like throwing up when you watch him get closed off and cold at the mention of his bro or his planet.

You know it’s going to come to a head one of these days. You’re going to fuck up, something’s going to slip, and he’s going to hate you. You know he will. He talks a lot about how fucking glad he is that you’re ‘bros.’ That you have each other to help quell the boredom as you make your way to the new session.

You’re going to fuck up all of that, and then you’ll both be alone and he’s going to hate you for ruining it.

You try not to think about that when you’re hanging out with him though, because Dave can see through your shit so easily. He must have noticed something now, because he’s looking at you with that little expression he has when he knows you have something on your mind.

“What’s up?” he asks, and you give him your own confused look right back.

“Nothing, we’re watching this godawful movie for the umpteenth time, why?” you ask. He doesn’t believe you for a second, skepticism clear on his face as he raises an eyebrow up over his shades.

“Dude, you just gave the most fucking forlorn sigh I ever heard. For a second I thought I had somehow stumbled upon a weary young mother, watching her bratty kids ride away on a beat up bus to some second rate public school before checking the mail to see that once again there’s no word from her husband off on his ‘business trip’ to the east coast, wishing she never gave up on her dream of being a dancer,” he rambles. You don’t understand most of the shit he just said, but you roll your eyes at the overly specific comparison.

“I did not fucking sound like that. I don’t even remember sighing,” you say, because you don’t. You were kind of too wrapped up in your thoughts to notice though.

“Bro, that is exactly what you sounded like. Seriously, what’s got you?” he presses, and you have a feeling he’s not going to let up without some sort of answer.

“I’m just tired,” you try, and he just keeps looking at you, staying quiet and waiting for you to continue. You slump against the back of the couch, shrugging under his gaze. “How much longer do we have on this fucking rock?” you ask, hoping he’ll take the bait. Just let him think you’re feeling stifled and trapped on this meteor. From the slight change in his expression and the way he relaxes back against the couch with you, you think it worked.

“Man, I don’t even know. I think we’re almost at the halfway point, from when I last asked Rose about it,” he says.

“Shouldn’t you have a better idea than that? Time is your thing,” you say, even though you know it doesn’t work like that. He gets so annoyed when people expect him to be some sort of living clock, when he has one of the worst senses of time out of all of you.

“Right, of course. It seems we’ll be arriving in exactly fuck-you years and time-is-a-goddamn-illusion days,” he snaps, and you can’t help the smile that tugs at your lips. You know he’s not actually mad at you, because you see him struggling to keep a straight face himself.

You honestly don’t care how long it takes you to reach the new session. You’ll probably just end up dead anyway, since you’re as pathetic as they come when it comes to combat and don’t have any godtier to fall back on. Saying that staying here with Dave is preferable to that is such a goddamn understatement that it’s ridiculous.

You don’t realize you’ve been staring at Dave for a bit longer than is polite for a moment. When you do realize, you start to notice a bunch of other little things. How your shoulders are pressed right up against each other. How your faces are so close that you wouldn’t even have to shift to close the gap. How Dave is staring right back at you with an expression that you swear is expectant, just waiting for you to do something.

One of your romcoms is still playing in the background, and you become starkly aware of how perfect this is. This is the scene in the movie you wait for every time. The one where Character A finally works up the courage to express their feelings to Character B, and in turn Character B suddenly realizes that they’ve been in love with Character A this whole time and had no idea. 

“Your glasses have a lot of scratches on them.”

You’re relieved when those are the words that come out of your mouth instead of so many others that could, or you did anything else inadvisable with said mouth besides talking. For a split second there’s a strange expression that flashes across Dave’s face, but it’s gone before you can quite figure out what it was.

A part of your thinkpan says it’s disappointment, but you tell that part to shut up.

Dave backs away a bit, and any chance for The Moment passes. He takes his shades off and inspects the front of them, nodding in agreement with your observation.

“Yeah, they are pretty damn old. I can’t alchemize new ones though, these are all official and shit,” he says with a shrug. He slides them back onto his face and you try to turn your attention back to the movie playing in front of you. Thankfully the upside to watching the same shit over and over is that you can jump in at any point and know what’s going on.

You aren’t sure how much time has passed when Dave speaks up again, startling you.

“Dude, what if the people in these movies just never fucking told each other how they felt? Like, they never managed to work up the courage or whatever?” he asks, and you tell yourself it’s just a question. Any hope for something that you see is just your fucked up thinkpan projecting onto everyone like it always does. It’s better this way. Safer. He’s all you fucking have you can’t risk it.

“That’d be a really fucking boring movie then, what would even be the point?” you answer.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, settling back in to watch the characters on screen with their neat and tidy happy ending.

You know you’re going to fuck up one day, and Dave is going to hate you, and it won’t be anything like your movies.

One day, but thankfully not today.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a thing instead of sleeping, because I forgot to take my sleeping pill. Whoops.  
> Dave's analogies are the one thing I am forever proud of. 
> 
> As always thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!


End file.
